Cleaning devices for cleaning a video drum and a video head of a video unit are known. For example, European Patent Application Specification No. 0,210,787A discloses such a cleaning device. The cleaning device comprises a housing substantially similar to the cassette housing of a video tape cassette. A cleaning tape is mounted around a pair of reels which are rotatable in the housing and engagable with the take-up and feed reel spindles of the video unit. The cleaning tape is fed from one reel to the other during a cleaning cycle. A carrier arm pivotally mounted in the housing carries a cleaning brush for cleaning the video drum and video head. On the cleaning tape being drawn out of the housing by the tape guide rollers of the video unit, and being brought into engagement with the video drum, the carrier arm and brush are pivoted outwardly so that the brush engages the video drum assembly and video head for cleaning thereof. The cleaning tape engages the drum and carries out some cleaning thereof in tandem with the cleaning brush. However, in certain cases the use of a cleaning tape for cleaning the drum and video head is undesirable.
Belgian Patent Specification No. 891.096 and Japanese Patent Specifications Nos. 59-63,020A and 58-45,621A all disclose cleaning devices for a video head and video drum of a video unit. These cleaning devices comprise a housing which is substantially similar to the housing of a video tape cassette. In each of these three cleaning devices, a cleaning member is mounted on a carrier arm which is movable from the housing into engagement with the video drum. However, these devices suffer from many disadvantages, in that there is virtually no control over the movement of the carrier arm with the result that the carrier arm or cleaning member can become impaled in the guide rollers and guide arms of the tape control mechanism in the video unit at the start-up and shutdown of the video unit. This, in general, would lead to serious damage being caused to the video unit, which in many cases may be irreparable. A further problem with the devices of the Belgian and Japanese patent specifications is that where a video unit is provided with a detecting mechanism to detect a tape jam in the video unit and to shut down the video unit in the event of a tape jam, these devices do not operate.
Other playback and/or recording units are provided with a moving head and/or drum which may be rotatable or otherwise movable. It is necessary to clean or otherwise treat the moving head and/or drum of such playback and/or recording units. There are many such playback and/or recording units. In general, such playback and/or recording units comprise a moving head and/or drum for recording and/or playing back magnetically and/or electronically encoded data. Such data may be encoded on a tape or other data carrier medium. Such playback and/or recording units may be, for example, a video unit, a digital audio tape recording and/or playback device, a mass data back-up storage recording and/or playback unit for computer data, a camcorder or an eight millimetre RV-2000 unit. Indeed, there are many other such playback and/or recording units. In some such playback and/or recording units, the playback and/or recording head may be rotated to scan the data using a helical scan technique, although needless to say, any other scanning techniques may be used.
There are no suitable devices for treating and/or cleaning the moving head and/or drum of such playback and/or recording units. Indeed, as mentioned above, in the case of video units where cleaning devices are provided, these have been found to be unsatisfactory. Furthermore, other than cleaning, there are no devices for treating the video head and/or video drum of a video unit in any other way.
There is therefore a need for a device for treating the moving head and/or drum of a playback and/or recording unit. In particular, there is a need for a device for cleaning the moving head and/or drum of a playback and/or recording unit. Even more particularly, there is a need for a device for treating, for example, cleaning the video drum and/or video head of a video unit which overcomes the problems of prior art devices.